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Beautiful Cultured Marble and Cast Polymer Products with SMI Minerals

Often, homeowners who love the look of natural marble and granite don’t love the price. Cast polymers—also known as cultured marble—provide an affordable alternative for use in sinks, counter tops, shower stalls, back splashes and other applications related to new-home construction or home-remodeling projects.

Specialty Minerals Inc. plays an important role here. Our high-quality ground calcium carbonates (limestones) and ground dolomites help produce good-looking, top-performing cast polymer building components.

Cultured marble or cast polymer building products are manufactured from thermosetting unsaturated polyester resins, colored with various pigments and filled with a ground calcium carbonate to reduce costs. The high-gloss upper surface is a clear or pigmented unsaturated polyester gel coat. Cultured marble products can be formulated to give both the appearance and weight of natural stone, and come in a range of colors and textures not available in nature. There are other advantages of cultured marble articles. For one, they are not as brittle and easily broken as quarried stone. They are also readily repaired, making them ideal for kitchen and bathroom fixtures.


SMI Ground Carbonates For Cast Polymers
Standard products for the cast polymer industry come in a range of particle sizes and resin demands. They are used either singly or in blends. Blending a smaller-particle-sized filler with a larger-sized filler gives good pigment packing, reducing resin demand and improving polymer strength. The coarser grades will have the lowest resin demands, while the finer grades will yield a more uniform whiteness.

Recommended products for cultured marble come from the Specialty Minerals plants in Lucerne Valley, California and Canaan, Connecticut.

  • Marblewhite® 30, 80 and 125 GCCs - SMI’s highest-brightness ground limestones, with tightly controlled particle sizes, from the Lucerne Valley plant.
  • Marble-Pfill® GCC - a screened limestone with good brightness and excellent particle packing, from Lucerne Valley.
  • Dolofil® 2055 ground dolomite - a calcium magnesium carbonate with good brightness. An excellent, economical filler where low resin demand and good flow properties are required. Dolofil 2055 can be used at high filler loading levels. Made in SMI’s Canaan  plant.

Click on a product name to download the technical data sheet for the product of interest.

All Specialty Minerals plants are ISO 9001 certified, and carefully control processes to produce minerals with uniform particle sizes and particle size distributions.

 

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